


Just Walk Away

by hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28511271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiasobi_writes/pseuds/hollyandvice
Summary: The next time he opens his eyes, there's pain in the middle of his chest. It's heavy and familiar and distant all at once, but ithurts, god, does it hurt.(Your heart, the voice says. It's your heart. He doesn't think that means what he thinks it does.)After Siberia, Tony only survives thanks to Extremis. The catch? He loses all his memories, including the fact that he was engaged to Steve Rogers.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64
Collections: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Holiday Exchange





	Just Walk Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cap Iron Man Community](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cap+Iron+Man+Community).



> Written for the Cap-IM Community gift pool for the following prompt:
> 
> _After Siberia (CA:CW) Tony almost doesn’t survive. The only reason he survives is Extremis. However, there is a side effect: he loses all of his memories. Rhodey and Pepper do their best to help him out, but things get complicated when the Rogues are pardoned and return. Now there is a man named Steve who looks heartbroken and who apparently is not only the man that almost killed him but also his fiancé._
> 
> Unbeta'ed because deadlines, so please excuse any mistakes!!

He opens his eyes to cold, white, blank nothingness that settles against his sternum, heavy and whole. There's a strange, shrill noise from somewhere to his right (heart monitor, his mind supplies, though he doesn't know what the words mean) and his body feels hot all over, a strange contrast to the cold white around him.

The white is broken up by a sudden flurry of activity, people moving in and out of his field of vision. The heat bleeds away, but so too does his consciousness.

The last thing he hears is a name, uttered in a low, familiar voice that he can't place.

This is wrong. Everything is wrong.

But then the sedative is dragging him under and there's nothing but blissful absence.

* * *

The next time he opens his eyes, there's pain in the middle of his chest. It's heavy and familiar and distant all at once, but it _hurts_ , god, does it hurt.

(Your heart, the voice says. It's your heart. He doesn't think that means what he thinks it does.)

The shrill beeping of the heart monitor is there again, and this time the flurry of activity is, instead, a single person looking over him. Long strawberry-blonde hair and a pale, worried face. He doesn't know who this is, but they look like they may know him. As though they may be able to explain who he is and what's going on and why everything hurts so much. He opens his mouth to speak, but it's dry and his lips are cracked and no sound comes out.

"Just relax, Tony. Please, just relax. You're safe. He can't get to you here. You're safe, Tony, please, just relax."

The words make sense, but not enough sense, and he just wants everything to stop hurting.

"James, go get the nurse, he's going to hurt himself like this."

How? What is he doing? He just wants the pain in his chest to stop. If he can get the thing in his chest out, then maybe everything will be okay. Maybe he can remake himself anew and everything will stop _hurting_.

A door opens, but there's no sound of footsteps leaving the room. When the door opens again, there is one pair of footsteps, and another face appears over his, dark and strong and home. "You're gonna be okay, Tones. You'll be just fine."

He isn't sure who Tones is, or if he's the same as the Tony person the woman was talking about, but he hopes that person is okay. He isn't though. He doesn't think he ever will be again.

* * *

He loses track of how many times he wakes up and how many times he has to be put under before he finally figures out what's going on. Before he finally figures out that he's the person everyone's worried about. That he matters.

He doesn't feel like he matters.

The two worried people — they introduce themselves as Pepper and Rhodes and they both look desperate for him to recognize him but he doesn't, he doesn't, and it _hurts_ — are at his side every time he wakes up, though, and part of him finds relief in that. Relief in the knowledge that there are people that will stay beside him.

He doesn't think many people do that.

They explain things to him. He's Tony Stark. He's a billionaire and a genius and, according to them, a very generous person. He sees the look they give each other, though, when they say that, and he isn't sure he believes them.

They also claim that he's a superhero.

"Me?" It feels almost right, like a puzzle piece that's got a hole where there's supposed to be a knob. He turns the idea around in his head, trying to make it fit right, but no matter how many times he turns the idea around, it never feels right. "That can't be right."

"It is," Rhodes says from his wheelchair. He knows Rhodes got hurt fighting with him, and the guilt could swallow him whole even though he barely knows this man. "You're a good person Tony, even if you don't always feel like it."

He just shakes his head. "Then why am I here? If I'm such a good person, why am I here?"

"Because not everyone knows how to recognize your goodness, Tony. Some people just don't understand."

It's not an answer, but it's all Rhodes will give him, so it has to be enough.

* * *

He gets bored pretty soon. Pepper just laughs when he tells her this, and hands him a tablet just like the one she always brings. "I was wondering when you'd want to start tinkering again."

The first thing that pulls up on the tablet is a pair of leg braces. For the first time since he woke up, he feels like this is something he knows, something he can work with. These— these are for _Rhodes_ , and if Tony can give him this, then maybe he'll stop feeling like such a burden.

It takes five days, which is four days longer than it should, but it takes a few tries to get FRIDAY to fabricate the braces when he isn't in the lab. Even then, it takes days, weeks of testing before he's satisfied with them. Rhodes would have been happy five iterations ago, but he's a perfectionist. From the way Rhodes and Pepper look at him, this isn't news to them.

After that it's upgrades for the SI tech that Pepper brings him and looking into the deeper files on the tablet. For some reason, there are entire sections that have been sealed off from him. But no one knows him better than he knows himself, apparently, and it only takes half a dozen tries to break the encryption. What he finds is nothing like what he expected.

Pepper and Rhodes have some questions to answer.

* * *

"Why didn't you tell me I was on a team?"

Pepper and Rhodes glance at each other. Neither of them looks keen to have this conversation.

He has a horrible thought. "Are they. Are they all dead? Is that what happened? Whatever happened to lay me up like this, did it... did it kill them?"

Rhodes scoffs. "I wish it had. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier."

The response is so vicious, so visceral that he reels back from Rhodes. "What?"

Pepper glares at Rhodes. "It doesn't matter, Tony. They're not here. We are. You don't need to worry about them."

"They were my team." He hates the desperate tone in his voice, hates how weak it makes him feel. "Why wouldn't I worry about them?"

"Because they did this to you."

The breath leaves his chest all at once. "What?"

"Yeah. Captain America put his goddamn shield through your chest. He knew how vulnerable your sternum is. He knows what—" Rhodes shakes his head sharply and runs a palm over his scalp. "But he did it anyway. Because he's a coward and a goddamn self-serving idiot that didn't know what he had and he—"

"James."

Rhodes deflates at Pepper's curt tone. "Look, just. Just don't worry about them, Tony, okay?"

He looks between the two of them. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Tony—"

"Just— just tell me the truth. What aren't you telling me?"

They do.

* * *

He moves like a ghost through the next two months. He fulfills contracts for SI, he makes upgrades to Rhodes' braces, works on the arc reactor technology, builds things the world neither needs nor wants, because if he ever stops moving, the truth of his so-called team and the reality of their betrayal will bury him alive. He moves and he breathes and he exists but this could never be called living. Not like this.

* * *

"Tony."

He looks up. No one is supposed to be able to get in here except for Rhodes and Pepper, but this voice doesn't sound like either of theirs. But there's a man here, tall and wild with a beard and eyes that blaze with blue fire that could burn him in an instant.

He pulls back. "How did you get in here."

"Tony, I know we didn't part on the best terms, but I had to come back. I had to make sure you— I had to know that I didn't—"

Understanding breaks like a wave over his shoulders. "Rogers."

Rogers' face brightens with relief. Rogers crosses the room toward him in three long strides. "You do remember. Pepper said you wouldn't, but—"

He knocks his chair over trying to get away from him. "Stay away from me."

Rogers freezes, his face a rictus of hurt. "Tony?"

"You did this," he says. "You did this to me. You're the reason I don't— the reason I can't—"

Rogers' face shifts. "Tony, what are you— you know me. You _know_ I never meant to hurt you. I would never."

"But you did. You did this to me. You're the reason I can't—" He clenches his eyes shut and lifts his hands to his ears. "Go away."

"What?"

"I said go _away_."

"I'm not leaving, Tony. You know who I am, you remember me, you just need time to—"

"I don't know who you are or what you want but you're not mine. Pepper is mine and Rhodes is mine because they were here. They loved me enough to stay here. To protect me. You— What did you do? Put your shield through my chest and tried to kill me."

"But I didn't. I could have, Tony, but I didn't. I didn't because I couldn't. Because I love you."

He drops to the ground, curling in on himself. "If you loved me, you wouldn't have done that to me in the first place. You wouldn't have hurt me like this. You wouldn't have _left_."

"You didn't give me much choice, Tony. You were going to kill Bucky."

Deep in his core, he goes still. He stops breathing, stops thinking, just _feels_ the way he forgot he could. It's a cold rage, an icy counterpoint to the heat in Rogers' eyes. He looks up. "Get out."

"You don't mean that."

"I have never meant anything more in my life. "Get out."

"Tony—"

" _Get out!_ "

Rogers reels back as he leaps to his feet, getting up in Rogers' face.

"You left. You left, and that means you lost the right to say any damn thing about me. About us. There is no us. There's just me. So get out. You lost the right to breathe the same air as me months ago."

Instead of clouding over with hurt or loss, Rogers' face splits into an aching smile. "Tony. You're still wearing my ring." He takes his hand, looking down at it with a kind of reverence that he's never seen on anyone's face. "You wouldn't do that if you weren't still mine."

He stares down at his hand. There is a ring there, dark ceramic against his skin. It must have been there the whole time because he has no memory of ever putting it on or taking it off, but he hadn't _seen_ it before.

He's going to be sick.

"You're still mine, Tony. And I'm still yours. I always was."

"No."

"Tony—"

He yanks his hand out of Rogers' grip and rips the ring from his finger. "You don't get to... to do this to me and then just shop up out of the blue and pretend you didn't break me."

Rogers' eyes are wide, the heat in his eyes replaced with horror. It's almost as though he'd thought things would go back to normal. As though he'd thought everything would just be okay again.

It won't. It never can.

"I'm not yours anymore. I never was."

" _Tony_ —"

"Get out." When Rogers takes a step closer, eyes on the ring, he flings it across the lab where it clangs against a filing cabinet before sliding underneath. "There's nothing left for you here."

"Please, Tony, I'll do anything, just let me back in. Please."

"You lost the right to ask that when you broke my heart." He's not sure where the words came from, but they feel true. They feel right. They must be real.

Rogers pales, but he can see the ache in his eyes. "Please don't ask me this."

"Last chance. Get out."

Rogers searches his face one more time. Whatever he finds must cement his understanding. He bows his head. "If that's what you want."

"I thought I'd made that clear already."

Rogers nods, slow and aching. He doesn't say anything, just looks his fill of him one more time before turning on his heel and walking away.

He doesn't cry. He doesn't cry and he doesn't hurt and nothing is wrong. He's the man Pepper and Rhodes have told him he is. He's Tony Stark. He doesn't need anyone else, least of all _Steve Rogers_.

He's just fine on his own.

(If he doesn't let him in again, he can't be hurt again. That's how this works, isn't it?)

(( _Isn't it??_ ))


End file.
